1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of communication.
Portions of the disclosure of this patent document contain material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office file or records, but otherwise reserves all rights whatsoever.
2. Background Art
Electronic communication, whether via land line, telephone, mail, internet, email, cell phone, etc, is accomplished by having a routing address of an intended receiver. In the world of telephony, this is the telephone number or subscriber line of the entity being called. In the context of the internet, it is the URL of a website. For email, it is the email address of the intended receiver. In today's fluid society, such routing addresses change constantly, often outpacing the ability of directories to keep up. In addition, a user may not keep up their own personal directory, leading to incorrect routing addresses for many entities. These problems are described below with respect to telephony, but have equal application to electronic communication such as email, web browsing, faxes, telexes, GPS location requests, etc.
In current telephony systems, a call placed to an inactive number may be handled in a number of ways. For example, if the former owner of the number has requested forwarding of the old number to a new number, the call may go through transparently to the caller, and reach the intended party. In other cases, the former owner of the number may have requested a forwarding message that indicates that the old number has been changed, with the new number then being provided. In both of these cases, the caller is able to connect with its intended party sooner or later.
More frustratingly are two other possibilities. In one, there is no forwarding message and the caller simply hears “This number is no longer in service” message. In another, the old number has already been assigned to a new customer, who knows nothing about the current number of the former owner. This of course can frustrate the caller and require additional research to identify a correct number to call.
The caller may decide to request directory assistance to locate the desired number. This may be difficult, if not impossible, when the former owner has changed cities or states. In many cases, directory assistance is limited to at least a region or city, and finding the number for an entity outside that region is not possible. The caller may also seek to use other resources, such as the Internet, published directories, etc. in an attempt to determine the appropriate phone number.
Sometimes the caller does not have the resources or time to spend looking up the information, particularly when traveling or when outside the office or home (such as on a cell phone). In other cases, the caller is not necessarily interested in a particular business or entity, rather in a service. For example, if the caller was seeking a florist who has changed its number to an unknown number and can't be found by directory assistance, the caller would like to get the name of another florist in the same neighborhood. Under current schemes, this requires the caller to already know the name of the alternative florist, or to spend time looking it up.
Another problem is the failure to get to a desired routing address due to errors in entry or routing of the address, due to mis-entry, electronic interference, computer error, etc. Currently there are no adequate techniques for catching such mistaken attempts and providing corrective and/or optional action.